The Thwarted Attack

Passenger With Shoe Bombs First Only Raised Eyebrows

Published: December 27, 2001

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With his dirty clothes and his hair pulled into a long ponytail, Mr. Reid did attract notice from some passengers as he stowed his bag in the overhead compartment. Some said he smelled funny. When he took his seat, by the window in Row 29, they said, he seemed self-conscious.

"He was bending over trying to hide himself, that's what I noticed in one second," Mr. Valleau said.

Lunch was served, but Mr. Reid refused a meal or a drink. Soon after, the woman next to him got up to go to the restroom. Mr. Reid lit the first match. A few passengers smelled the smoke. Geoffrey Bessin, in business class, presumed it was the meals; a passenger in coach recalled thinking someone was protesting the smoking ban.

Hermis Moutardier, a flight attendant, walked through the aisles, trying to sniff out the smell. A passenger pointed to Mr. Reid. When Ms. Moutardier confronted him, Mr. Reid popped the match in his mouth. She went to tell the captain.

"I thought it was a mother scolding a child, but you could hear a little panic in her voice," said Mr. Bessin, in business class.

Maija Karhusaari, in coach, had eaten her lunch and then started to nap. She was awakened by shouting.

Ms. Moutardier had come back to Mr. Reid's seat and found him holding a match to the tongue of his shoe. She grabbed at it, and he shoved her, hard. She landed on the floor, four rows back. Now she was yelling, calling for water. Ms. Karhusaari passed her water bottle' someone else passed a larger one, and others began dumping drinks on Mr. Reid.

Cristina Jones, another flight attendant, said she rushed in and lunged for Mr. Reid's shoe. He bit her on the hand, drawing blood.

Her scream pierced through the earphones on Marcelo Lu, in the last row of business class. "I took off my headphones and saw a woman run holding her hands," Mr. Lu said.

Eric Debry, sitting behind Mr. Reid, reached over and grabbed his arms, then his shoulders. As two other men took his legs, they began calling for belts, anything, to restrain him. Ms. Karhusaari yanked her earphones loose and passed them back.

Eight to 12 men wrestled with Mr. Reid. Kwame James, a professional basketball player who is 6 feet 8 inches tall, would later say how hard it had been to pin down the 6-4 Mr. Reid, calling him "almost possessed." The passengers, though, were equally determined.

"There was no panic," Mr. Debry said. "I think that very little people realized, actually, what was happening."

When they had finally pinned him, two doctors injected him with a sedative. Mr. Reid shrieked.

Mr. Bessin, in business class, finally got up to look back. He saw passengers standing around a man and a co-pilot kneeling, handcuffing him with plastic garbage-bag ties.

"It had a bit of a theater feel, some people were crying, some people were just staring in astonishment," he said. But it appeared calm, so he returned to his seat.

The passengers took off Mr. Reid's sneakers after he was strapped to his seat, and took turns watching over him as the plane continued on its diverted path, to Logan International Airport in Boston. A few of the men guarding Mr. Reid asked what he had been planning. "You'll see," they quoted him as saying.

The rest of the passengers were quiet for the two hours that remained. Some fretted that he had been trying to set a fire on the plane. Others worried about more typical travelers' woes: lost luggage, missed connections.

As the plane entered United States airspace, the pilot told passengers not to worry if they saw F-15's flying alongside. Passengers would have to ask permission to go the restroom, and any who did, he told them, would be patted down first.

When the plane landed at Logan at 12:50, the pilot came on again to tell passengers to remain seated while a SWAT team boarded.

"They just walked in and went directly to him," said Mr. Lu, a student at Georgetown University. "They put him in handcuffs, and that was all. He left with his socks."

Investigators who interviewed passengers at Logan did not tell them anything about the two explosive devices found in Mr. Reid's sneakers, simply that it might be something more than someone trying to burn his shoe.

The passengers boarded again — taking off their shoes at security first — and flew to Kennedy International Airport in New York, where the flight picked up a new crew.

One of the new flight attendants stood up and expressed thanks to the Paris-Boston crew. Another man then gave brief remarks in English. He asked Mr. Valleau to translate into French.

Mr. Valleau thanked the passengers, thanked the crew and thanked God for getting them through.